Sony Seeks Mobile Turn Around With New PS Vita Wi-Fi

Sony might have just given longtime PS Vita admirers enough reasons to rush out and purchase the portable gaming console. It’s bringing the slimmer, lighter PS Vita it introduced to Japan last year to the United States and bundling it with a copy of Borderlands 2 and some related accessories too.

Announced today on the PlayStation Blog, The PS Vista PCH-2000, or what Sony is also referring to as the PS Vita Wi-Fi will launch this “spring” with everything users need to get started in the bundled copy of Borerlands 2 right away. That includes a 8GB memory card, a power cable, the game itself and all six of the game’s downloadable content packs.

To be clear, the PS Vita Wi-Fi isn’t a completely new model. In fact, it’s the same slimmer and lighter PS Vita that the company introduced to Japanese users just before last year’s Tokyo Games Show. At the time Sony told indicated that PS Vita with Wi-Fi was 15% lighter and 20% thinner than the PS Vita that proceeded it.

Achieving that feat has cost some functionality. As its name would suggest, the PS Vita Wi-Fi doesn’t include compatibility with the networks that wireless carriers use. That’s big since Sony originally talked up that functionality when it unveiled the original version of the PS Vita. The PS Vita Wi-Fi also only includes a slightly less brilliant 5-inch IPS display. Previous versions of the handheld included a 5-inch OLED display. The PS Vita Wi-Fi includes 1GB of memory too. All of these changes do allow PS Vita Wi-Fi owners to get 4-6 hours of active gaming time instead. That’s in stark contrast to the 3-5 hours the handheld got previously.

All told, the changes from the PS Vita to the PS Vita Wi-Fi aren’t bold enough to warrant an immediate upgrade from the prior version. Still, it’s a decent upgrade based on the extended battery life alone. Sony is hoping that the slimmer and slightly more modern handheld will help boost flagging sales of the PS Vita in the United States. Certainly, an extended line up of titles like Minecraft and the Walking Dead Season 2 won’t hurt the consoles sales either.

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Turning around the console is key since Sony and Nintendo have seen their shares of the mobile gaming space fall thanks to mobile gaming.